Torn Fragments
by sephiroth117
Summary: This is a story about the end of the Covenant Human war and about the last remaining Spartans and a last ditch effort to save the human race from total extinction. Chapter 3 is up. Sorry for the wait.
1. Chapter 1: The Final Four

Torn Fragments: The End of the Human-Covenant War

Disclaimer: I do not own bungie or xbox or the halo franchise or any other affiliated company for that matter.

Chapter 1: The Final Four

Captain Amphase drifted along through the bridge of his ship observing the viewscreens of his crew. "Status report," he barked suddenly. His navigation engineer replied, "sir, there are seven covenant capital ships surrounding us; two to our starboard, two to our port, one behind us, and two directly ahead." The man in charge of making their craft invisible turned towards the captain, "we are successfully holding at 89 percent ghost sir. We should be able to keep up this level of stealth for another 14 hours." "Dammit!" the captain said as he pounded an empty terminal sending himself a few feet backwards in the process from the low gravity. "Why wont these covie bastards leave now. They already won the battle. What's the point of having seven capital ships stationed out in the middle of nowhere?"

Outside the invisible ship, the hulking wreckage of a UNSC ship floated past and was deflected by one of the covenant capital ship's shields.

The navigation engineer turned towards the captain and said, "sir this isnt the middle of nowhere, this is a critical slipspace exit area usually from around the Earth area."

Then it suddenly dawned on the captain, "wait that must mean that the invasion of Earth must have started and they are guarding any exit areas for surviving ships. God I really hate these sons of bitches. They gotta kill you while you run. I really wish we could have won this war."

The navigation engineer said, "sir, we still can win this war. If Earth holds up against the invasion..."

"Come to your senses! The Covenant have a force almost five times the force that is defending Earth. If they manage to land any ground troops on the Earth surface then it will already be more than the already overwhelmed Marine forces can handle. Face it, the human race is doomed to be extinct by the end of the year."

"If only we had a Spartan..."

"Not even 100 Spartans could save the human race. There is just too many covie bastards left. All they need is to conquer one more planet and then its over."

"Sir there are still other colonies on other planets."

"You dont understand, the Earth is the symbol of the human race. You take that away and we will have nothing left to fight for. You gotta figure that pretty much everyone will give up after that. Believe me i would like to have hope for the future of the human race like you do but my life experiences all tell me that this is the end of the line for all of us."

"So is that it sir? Are we just giving up? Are we just going to sit here until the covies find us and blow us all to dust? Or are we going to try to make a difference?"

"I would like to share your enthusiasm, but we are just one ghost ship and we are stuck in the center of seven covie ships with our energy about to run out. As captain of this ship i see that there really nothing that we can do. And even if we manage to get out of here without being killed, then what do we do? The ship that we were supposed to be bringing the secret shipment to got destroyed minutes before we got here. We have no orders. The final UNSC headquarters that is still standing is on the planet that is currently under conquest. So since you believe that your captain is not doing the job that he should be, you tell me what we should do."

"Why dont we check what the shipment was? It doesnt really matter if the secret gets out now."

"Ah what the hell why not. We have nothing else to do for the next 14 hours besides carry on this useless argument." The captain then turned towards the ghost engineer who had been silent all throughout this conversation and said "let me know the second anything changes." The ghost engineer gave a slight nod and turned back towards his station. The captain had always cut this guy a lot of slack because of the huge burden he carried. It was the sole responsibility of the ghost engineer to avoid detection at all costs. Detection could mean the end of the entire crew's lives. So ghost engineers held the lives of the entire crew in their hands.

Down below the bridge was the storage area of the ship. The ship was rather large for a ghost as it had at one point been a cargo ship that had been partially destroyed and then rebuilt with stealth technology. The captain approached the vault which held the top secret cargo they had been initially ordered to deliver. He inputed the 16 digit password and the door panel chimed with a green light. The door slid away and the captain and navigation enginner entered the unusually cold vault. Vaults were uncommon in almost all kinds of ships in that time and this one was even more unique. It had been installed directly into the ship with the delivery already inside. What now greeted the two crew members were four large cryo tanks, one of which was significantly larger than the rest.

"We were ordered to deliver four cryotanks? Man this just gets stranger by the second," the captain said as he approached one.

The navigation enginner approached the largest of the cryo tanks and peered inside the small window. The engineer fell to his knees and let out a gasp. "Oh my God, its a Spartan."


	2. Chapter 2: Alive?

Chapter 2: Alive?

"Stand up," the captain said to the engineer. "This is obviously some trick or joke by someone very high up. The spartans were wiped out over three years ago in the battle of Bunta Terrel. I was a crew member on the only survivng ship of that battle and I personally saw the ship carrying the last spartans get destroyed by plasma right before we jumped to Slipspace."

The engineer, only half hearing the captain speaking, walked over to the cryo moniter on the large cryo tank and took a look at the vitals and the cryo time. "Um sir, these vitals show that this Spartan is still alive. And according to the cryo timer, this one has been in cryo for over two and a half years."

"You and i both know that that's impossible. No human can survive that long in cryo."

"But this is no normal human, this is a Spartan."

The captain approached the cryo computer with a skeptical look to confirm if this was true. A small timer in the upper left corner of the blue screen read 02:07:21:14:43:38 in descending order of years all the way down to seconds. "There must be a malfunction," the captain said in disbelief. He and the engineer went around to each tank and read all of the cryo computers and found that all of them read almost identical times and all of the vitals showed average cryo heartrate and blood pressure.

"Sir, don't you think we should open them?" the engineer said as he reached for the depressurization switch on the nearest tank.

The captain grabbed his arm right before his finger reached the switch and said, "Even if this is not a trick and they are alive there is still no point in waking them. Don't you see that all we would be doing is waking them to their death? There is no way out of this predicament, as those ships are not likely to be moving any time soon."

"You don't know that sir, they might have to move if the covies need reinforcements."

The captain sighed, "how many times do I have to tell you, there is no way that we can win this battle; we are too heavily outnumbered. So tell me, why would we want to wake them with the sad news that the human race will soon be extinct and that they have a little less than 13 hours to live?"

"But sir, they are Spartans. They might have an idea as to what to do in this situation."

"I highly doubt that, and all of this is under the assumption that they are alive. I am still thinking that this is some kind of trick."

"Well sir its like you said earlier, we have nothing else to do so we might as well open the tanks. If we aren't able to get out of here it won't make a difference what we do, will it captain?"

The captain let out a long, drawn-out sigh, "fine but i'm telling you; don't get your hopes up."

The engineer reached down and pressed the switch. The sound of pressure being released from the tank filled the room. After three minutes the sound stopped and the engineer reached down and turned the release hatch handle. The sound of locks disengaging was heard and then the whole front of the tank swung up from the bottom until it almost touched the ceiling. Inside the cryo tank, there was a large human that was equipped from head to toe with green armour. The armour was marked here and there with small black marks so it was obvious that whomever wore this armour had seen lots of action. The faceplate, which is the only part of the armor that isn't green, was polarized so it was impossible to tell who it was that was wearing this armor. The helmet of the Spartan moved very slightly.

"Oh my god! The Spartan is alive!"


	3. Chapter 3: Awakening

Chapter 3: Awakening

John, Spartan 117, awoke slowly and his vision was heavily blurred as if he was in deep fog. His once finely honed reflexes were now very dull and his very strong muscles seemed unresponsive when he tried to move them. On the very brink of his consciousness, he felt magnetic clamps disengage from somewhere towards what he perceived to be the back of his armor. His unresponsive muscles were unable to withstand his weight and he fell to his knees. His vision was cleared slightly and he caught the glimpse of pale metal through his visor. His muscles started to respond and his arm moved slowly forward. His muscles still felt as if they were made of lead, but he forced them to respond. He had no idea where he was so he would need to be in the best possible position in case he needed to fight. With a massive physical strain, he forced his body to rise a few inches and then a few feet until he was back at his knees.

John's vision cleared a little bit more and he could see some blurry shapes in the room, some of which resembled humans. Along with his physical strain, he strained his mind to remember as to why he might be here and where he was. John strained again and he got his arms to rise up to his chest. He forced his arms into a defensive blocking position in case the human shapes he saw just happened to be hostiles. He force his eyes to focus as much as he could and he gained a small amount more of visibility. His head felt like it was in a bubble because he had not regained any of his senses yet besides a slight amount of vision. He tried to muster up all of the exertion he could and was able to force his weak-feeling muscles to force him to stand. After a few moments of exertion, he finally got to his legs. His legs felt like they were made of the heaviest substance and as if they would collapse at any second. His body swayed slightly and his knees felt like they would buckle. Then, finally, he regained his balance.

Then, all of a sudden, his senses returned to him in a rush. It was as if the bubble that his head had been in had just popped and everything that was outside of it came rushing in. From what he could hear, there was not very much sound at all, but there were bright lights that were obscuring the rest of his vision. Then, his mental capacity returned from the primal to the logical and some of his memories as well. This was too much for even a Spartan brain to handle and his mind lost its consciousness to compensate. A loud metallic slam echoed out as his Armour slammed to the ground.

---------------------- two hours later ----------------------

John awoke again, but this time he regained his consciousness a lot faster. In front of him, once again, he saw a metallic floor underneath him. He flexed his muscles and they were still heavy feeling, but he could actually control them. He stood up very slowly, trying not to shock himself again. He took a quick, but thorough look around at the room he was in. He saw three closed cryo tanks and an open one which he figured to be the one he came from although he could not assume. Spartans could not afford to assume anything. He saw two men, one who was slowly walking toward him, and another who was against one of the walls, sitting with his back against the wall and with wide eyes. Spartans often got awestruck expressions from people who caught a glimpse of their green MJOLNIR armor. The man who had been slowly walking towards John extended his right hand and said, "Hello Spartan. I am Adam Amphase and I am the captain here. I believe we have a lot to talk about."


End file.
